The present invention relates to a method for producing a decorated profile body, comprising the steps: providing a substrate; applying a decoration background; and applying by means of the digital printing process a decoration finish which covers the decoration background at least in some sections, wherein the decoration background and the decoration finish together form a decoration of the profile body.
In the furniture industry, conventional printing processes, such as e.g. the gravure printing process, are used for decorating table tops and kitchen worktops. The characteristic appearance of this decoration (hereinafter: reference decoration) changes color when the type of light changes. The color impression of the decoration of a profile body (e.g. edgeband) attached to the panel must change in the same way as the reference decoration, since otherwise the so-called metamerism effect occurs. The term “metamerism” is defined in DIN 6172 and denotes an effect according to which two samples which look the same under one type of light exhibit a color difference under another type of light.
The decoration templates or template panels from the furniture industry exhibit a wide palette of color pigments and are usually printed using water-based inks, wherein a colored absorbent paper is used as the decoration carrier or substrate. The choice of pigment for these printing inks is limited hardly at all by the method. On the other hand, the inkjet printing process allows only a limited choice of color pigments on account of the method. However, in order to print the reference decoration also onto other substrates, in particular polymeric substrates, such as wall connection profiles and edgebands, the use of identical pigment types and sizes is primarily the basic prerequisite for a printed structure that exhibits no metamerism.
When printing substrates by means of the digital inkjet printing technique using the “drop on demand” and “continuous inkjet” methods, the color systems used are usually developed for the respective printing head and are specially adapted to the material to be printed. The color composition usually takes place according to the CMYK principle, i.e. by combining the colors cyan, magenta and yellow and black (Key). In the case of digital printing with a color composition according to the CMYK principle, therefore, only a limited color choice is available compared to conventional printing processes, such as e.g. the gravure printing process, and this color choice is not sufficient to avoid the metamerism effect.
What is needed therefore is a method of providing a decorated profile body and a method for the production thereof, according to which the entire color space of conventional printing processes, such as e.g. the gravure printing process, can be recorded also in the case of digital printing of the profile body, and thus a metamerism effect can be at least largely prevented.